


Houseplants, Fairy Lights and You

by thatsthephan



Category: Phan
Genre: Cute, Fluff, M/M, Phan - Freeform, Teacher AU, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 04:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13697061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsthephan/pseuds/thatsthephan
Summary: Dan's a bored Sociology professor. His life gets a lot more interesting when a new Botany professor moves into the classroom next door. Plus, it's Valentine's Day, and the students sense love in the air.





	Houseplants, Fairy Lights and You

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for @phangerous on tumblr in honor of Valentine's Day-I hope you enjoy your teacher AU, Elina!:)

Dan  
The bell rang, my head pounded, and feet stomped past one another in a rush to escape my last AdSoc class before lunch. I didn’t blame any of them-lately the world had been so bleak that my lessons had all been drifting towards the inevitably of the human race to destroy itself, much as it had attempted to do in the past, time and time again.

I really did enjoy my job. My colleagues were nice enough, and the kids were great. Reading the students’ papers, seeing their insight on the world and its inhabitants, made my weekends a lot less boring. A lot less lonely.

But nevertheless, I was lonely. My parents were in Manchester, and London was a very different city. Bigger, louder, meaner, it seemed. I felt small despite standing nearly 6’4”, and although I had a few friends and had been on a few dates, I never felt a true, deep connection with anyone or anything but my work.

That is, until the day I met him.

The students knew first, of course. They always knew when there was something “going on”, and so when I saw their bright eyes and heard their whispers floating down the halls, I knew something was happening. I didn’t know what, and since it was only eight in the morning, I didn’t frankly care all too much.

“Alright, class. Hello, good morning, so on and so forth. I hope your weekend was good, and I also hope you remembered your response papers over the short stories we’ve been reading these past few weeks?”

The following mumbles, shuffling of papers, and scattered groans spread through the room, and as they passed their papers to the front, I caught a whiff of coffee. Strange, I thought. I didn’t allow drinks in my room.

I was kneeling behind my desk when he spoke, and my first thought was I don’t know him. My second was I’d like to.

“Anyone know where room 207 is? Or if would your teacher be willing to trade me this one, as I rather like the decorations.”

Whispers. A wolf-whistle. Chuckles. A student called, “Ask him yourself!” And I stood up, facing the door, and the angel standing in it’s threshold.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but the man truly was stunning. High cheekbones, gorgeous eyes, a huge grin lighting up his entire face. I had to steady myself before speaking, firstly because I was about to choke on my own tongue and secondly because my students knew me as the intimidating, suave professor who didn’t take late assignments or bullshit. 

“Why thank you, decorated it myself. And no, you can’t have it, but I’d be up for selling it to you for a price.”

My students laughed, and the man smirked a bit. “I’ll consider it, if you’ll consider a trade, once I decorate mine. 207?”

Oh, so he was a new professor. Interesting. I hadn’t heard anything about a new course starting up, but then again, I hadn’t been of peak focus lately. “Around the corner, in that weird sort of crevice thing. Sorry about that, there’s lots of windows in there. Students get distracted.”

The man only smiled wider. “I love windows,” he stuck out his hand. “Phillip Lester. I teach Botany.”

“Daniel Howell. Advanced Sociology.”

Phillip-Professor Lester-waved to the students on his way out, and for some reason, they gave him a round of applause. His wave turned into waving them off, and as they watched him leave, I realized with amazement and horror that I was beginning to blush. 

I hurried to distract the class before they noticed, although I knew it was too late. We’d had a moment, the new professor and I, and if it wasn’t flirting then I didn’t know what was. 

“Alright, let’s turn to chapter three in your-”

“Professor Lester seems cool, right Professor Howell?”

I sighed, smiling patiently. “Yes, Amanda, he does. Now on page-”

“Did you think he was cute?”

I huffed out a laugh, feeling my face go redder and my cool facade dissolve faster and faster. “Sal, that is highly inappropriate! Now can we all focus less on a random professor and more on societal progress throughout the 1900s, please?”

There were still whispers, but the interrogation ceased. For now.

“Thank you. Now if you’ll look in your books…”

 

Phil  
I thought to myself as I left that classroom, “I think I’m going to like this job”. Which was good, considering I had hated my last one. They hadn’t even had a botanical program of any sort, so I was stuck teaching regular biology. And there’s nothing wrong with biology-if you have an interest in it. Which I very much did not.

I found my new classroom, which, as the handsome Professor Howell had warned me, was very airy with windows, and spent the remaining portion of the day moving my many microscopes, various lab tools, and to any other person, too-many plants into the room. By the time I was done, the sun was setting-as it was only February, after all-and my classroom appeared more as a greenhouse now. I grinned. 

“Wow.”

I turned around to see the wide eyes of none other than Professor Howell traveling the length of the room, in awe of what he was seeing.

“It doesn’t look like a dingy box with a fuckton of windows anymore. I’m impressed.”

I was beyond proud of that fact, but I tried not to let it show, instead playing cool by leaning on one of the lab tables near me. “So? Down for a trade?”

He held my gaze steadily, a slow smile spreading over his face. He had adorable dimples.

“No. But I think I may be in here quite a lot.”

My demeanor broke, and I giggled. “I think I may be okay with that.”

 

My first class loved the room. They were all as equally shocked as Professor Howell had been, and told me stories of how they had thought this room had been haunted since they’d never seen anyone use it. They thought I was funny, and that my way of teaching, my anecdotes and stories and many, many colors of markers that I used for writing out the lessons on the board, made me the best teacher in the school. They told me all this, writing it in their introductory papers or whispering it to their friends, and among all the compliments I also caught rumors of a “ship” developing of me and the professor in room 205 around the corner. 

Interesting.

Speaking of the professor in 205, he showed up around lunchtime, holding two Starbucks cups in his hands. 

“Coffee for you, Professor Lester. How’s the first day going?”

I motioned for him to pull up a stool to my desk, and took a sip of the coffee. I wasn’t sure what he had flavored it with, but it was delicious. “Call me Phil, please. And it’s going great; the students love the room, so I think I may be winning this competition we started.”

Raising an eyebrow, he took a sip of his own drink. “Oh, a competition now? Well fairy lights win that with teens any day. And you can call me Dan then, Phil.”

We chatted for the rest of the lunch period, and I knew students kept poking their heads in, but we ignored them. I don’t really think either one of us minded them “shipping” us together, because honestly, I think we really did like each other.

“Well,” Dan finally announced, standing up and stretching. “I guess I better go ponder the human condition with the kids for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t want to get fired now, of all times.”

I felt a flush go over my face, but only smiled at Dan. “I’ll be here amongst my plant children. Have fun with the fairy lights.”

He smirked before leaving, and I wondered if I’d ever fell in love so easily before.

Whoa, I thought to myself. Slow down there. You’re letting Valentine’s Day get to your head.

That was likely. After all, it was in a week.

 

Dan  
I brought Phil a different flavored coffee every day that week. We exchanged numbers, learned that we had an almost identical taste in music and TV shows, and had the entire senior class of our school rioting to get us to kiss in front of them. We thought it was hilarious, but the students were smart, and kept thinking up way to get each of us to either talk or think about the other. One student bought me a small plant to put on my desk, and frequently I would trail off to stare at it, remembering Phil’s room and our lunch dates. Another student hung fairy lights in Phil’s room, since he didn’t have a lamp yet.

Teenagers are evil. And smart.

When the day before Valentine’s Day rolled around, a student asked me if I had plans.

“I’m chaperoning the dance, Cassidy. Also, that’s frankly none of any of your business.”

The class snickered, but luckily that was the only question that was asked. 

Phil, however, informed me that the same question was asked to him, and we began to get suspicious. Although, there wasn’t much we could do, as that had been our last class of the day and the dance was at 6:30.

I arrived early, looking for Phil, of course. The students were probably all occupied with their friends and dates to pay any attention to us tonight, anyway.

I spotted Phil, who looked stunning in a suit, and casually walked over. But he spoke first.

“You look great, especially in this lighting.”

I was taken aback, and I thanked the universe the lights were tinted pink, so Phil wouldn’t notice my blush as much. “I was about to say the same to you.”

Phil looked down, embarrassed, but then met my eyes with a mischievous look in his. “Have you noticed anything odd about the decor of this dance yet?”

I hadn’t, since I only had eyes for Phil at the moment, but when I looked around I began to laugh. “They did not.”

The dance was themed around us. There were flowers, as per any Valentine’s dance, but there were also plants, identical to the ones in Phil’s room, all over the room. And the amount of fairy lights was absurd, with most of them twinkling amongst the leaves of the plants.

“Are we that obvious?” I asked, and Phil held out a hand, asking me to dance. I blinked in surprise.

“If we are, what more can we do?”

He made a great point. We began to dance to the song that was playing, which we didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. We fit together perfectly, as did the decor that was themed around us and our personalities. Maybe it was the fact that it was the “day of love” or maybe it was the lighting that made Phil look particularly beautiful, but I leaned in and kissed him, meaning for it to just be a peck.

But he held it, leaned into it, and after no more than a second a round of applause went up around us. Even some of our colleagues joined in, and we blushed redder than the lights that made everything glow.

“Whoops,” Phil whispered, but I just grinned, waving the students applause off. “They’re sneaky.”

“At least they decorate good, though.”

“True,” I responded. “I love the houseplants. And the fairy lights. And you.”

Phil kissed me again, whispering it back, and I decided Valentine’s Day wasn’t so bad after all.


End file.
